"Here's the thing with Dave - he knows what he wants, and as long as he's not crazy drunk, he's a great guy," Poland says. "When we did The System Has Failed, it was awesome, man - it was fun. It was a learning experience; I met Ralph Patlan, who helped me mix my next record. The thing about Dave Mustaine, you know what you're getting. He doesn't hide anything. It's not, like, a mystery."

Poland, who has been in the instrumental/jazz fusion outfit OHM since 1997, was the guitarist in Megadeth from 1984 to 1987. He returned for a brief stint in 2004 to do session guitar work on The System Has Failed, but later that year had a falling out with Mustaine over a reissue of Rust in Peace which featured his playing on some unreleased demos; Poland claimed he wasn't compensated fairly when they came out as bonus tracks.

"When I did The System Has Failed, [Mustaine] was working on adding the demos to a re-release of Rust In Peace," Poland says. "And I wasn't going to get paid, but I didn't realize that until it came out. I was like, 'Wait a minute - I'm not getting paid for this.' And I tried to call Dave at least a dozen times, and I never heard back from him. Then I called Dave's manager a dozen times, and he wouldn't get back to me. The last time I called him, I said, 'Hey, man. If you don't call me back, I'm going to call [my lawyer], and we're going to have to get into it.' [Mustaine's manager] calls me back and totally insults me, saying, 'You played a couple solos. So what?' And I'm like, 'What do you mean, 'So what?'' 'Well, Dave thought that you would do it for the fans.' I said, 'Okay. Is everybody else that played on that demo doing it for the fans? Are they getting paid?' He said, 'Chris, that's not the point.' I said, 'Listen man, we have to do something here. I'm not just going to walk away. I love the fans, but I'm just not going to do it. If everybody else is getting a performance royalty for this, I want one.' I want everybody to know that it wasn't a nuisance suit, it wasn't anything like that. I made every attempt to work it out, and they just ignored me."

Mustaine said it was a "nuisance suit" in a tweet he sent out this past December, adding, "Chris sued me for $9,500 bcuz I put the demos I paid for on the RIP reissue. It’s called a nuisance suit and he sold out our friendship for four figures. I’ll always appreciate him being in Megadeth, but not as much as I do him NOT being in Megadeth."